-n ■ 

^ DISCOURSE "^ 



^ 



:) 



HISTORY, 

AS A 

BRANCH OF THE NATIONAL LITERATURE, 

DELIVERED BEFORE TUE 

BELLES LETTRES SOCIETY OF DICKINSON COLLEGE, 
BY 

JOB R.'^YSON, 

AX HOKOKARY MEMBER. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

T. K. AND P. G. COLLINS, PllINTERS, 

1849. 

iD C 



% 



1/ 



DISCOURSE 



HISTORY, 



BRANCH OF THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



BELLES LETTRES SOCIETY OF DICKINSON COLLEGE. 



JOB R. TYSON, 






P H I L A D E L r II I A : 

T. K. AND P. G. COLLINS, PRINTERS. 

1849. 



T)iC 



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Philadelphia, JTov. 1, 1849. 

To CHARLES J. T. M INTIRE, 
THOMAS J. HUTCHINS, 
W. C. WILSON, Esqiurcs, 

Oojiimillcc (if Bellas Lcttrcs Socicti/ nf Dickinson Oolli-rje. 

Gentlemen, 

I cordially thank your Society for its compliment- 
ary resolution of the 12th of July, respecting my 
Address. A copy of it could not be sent for the 
printer, as requested, during your vacation. Engage- 
ments and absences must plead for the delay since. 

On the main topic of the Discourse I feel some so- 
licitude. It is a great question, on which volumes 
could be vi^ritten. No permanent injury, it is hoped, 
will be sustained from my inadequate enforcement of 
its claims to your notice, and now, through the press, 
to the American public. I have persuaded myself 
that a historical literature of our own would excite 
and diffuse a deeper interest in our domestic annals, 
and inspire a more ardent and rational love of country. 
The spiritof this department would be transfused into 
every other. It cannot be said of our country, that 
" every field has its battle, and every rivulet its song," 
but an absorbinir love of our native land would soon 



6 LETTER TO THE COMMITTEE. 

kindle the genius of its children into making many 
spots of its extended surface renowned and classical. 

But the incidental reference to Macaulay's History 
of England, though introduced merely as an illustra- 
tion, seems to have attracted as much attention as the 
main topic of the discourse. Two several critiques 
vs'hich appeared about the time of its delivery, im- 
puted my sentiments respecting this history, to the 
unfavorable view wliich it takes of the character of 
William Penn, and my own descent from a Quaker 
ancestry. 

There is no part of history, so called, which has so 
little effect upon the discerning reader as the ascrip- 
tion of motives to historical persons. The memory 
of the virtuous Founder of Pennsylvania, for example, 
will not be injured by the misconstructions of his un- 
sparing assailant. It has survived much keener as- 
saults. His whole life was a struggle with and against 
the prejudices of his age. Upon the deposition of 
James H., all the reproaches which tlie fury of in- 
flamed religious and party zeal could invent, were en- 
listed against him. Macaulay has reproduced charges 
which were then disproved, and repeated epithets of 
which those who employed them afterwards became 
ashamed. Who will believe that a man who had re- 
moved the penalty of death from nearly two hundred 
offences, could delight in contemplating the agonized 
victims of the gibbet; or that he who had so signally 
proved his love of freedom, would wittingly minister 
to the dark designs of a despot? But a more fitting 



LETTER TO THE COMMITTEE. 7 

occasion than the present will offer to do justice to the 
public and private character of Penn. 

A Quaker lineage of five or six generations, is an 
inadequate reason for one's dissenting from the doc- 
trine and spirit of a historian, who is asserted to be 
quite as near to the immediate disciples of Fox as his 
commentator. If such a motive could operate upon 
the judgment, his distorted account of the rise and 
history of the English Church would not be without 
its influence upon the question of appreciation. There 
is indeed little bias to warp or prejudice to mislead me, 
which is not controlled or neutralized by an antagonist 
influence. Historians, it is said, should be of no coun- 
try, religion, or party, but! suppose the philosopliy of 
the sentiment is satisfied with an emancipation from 
their sinister influences. 

But no part of Macaulay will strike an American 
reader so painfully, as the studied eulogy and undue 
prominence which he gives to the aristocratic element 
of the British Constitution. It may be anticipated 
that his anti-republican bias will become more mani- 
fest as he approaches our own day; especially when 
the track of his history shall lead him across the At- 
lantic, into the designs of Congress, and into the 
Council Chamber of Washington, Jefferson, and Ha- 
milton. That pen which would consign the Founder 
of Pennsylvania to infamy, may not hesitate to brand 
the illustrious fathers of our nation with motives un- 
worthy of their patriotism. 

The free spirit of Europe had risen when this his- 
torian began to write. He has not avowed with what 



LETTER TO THE COMMITTEE. 



purpose his liistory was undertaken, nor whether his 
great task was assumed at the instance of others, or 
from a beUef that he had sufficient power to check 
the insurgent tendency of the masses. The presses 
of England were loud in giving it publicity, and their 
note of exultation at the manner of its accomplishment, 
was heard, in its echoes, through the baronial halls 
of Europe. 

My own humble convictions are against the wisdom 
of an organic change in the body of British society, 
however beneficially the pruning-knife might be ap- 
plied to its excrescent branches. But that writer can- 
not be regarded as a discreet or wise counsellor of 
England, who eulogizes the existing state of affairs, 
as the best of all possible political arrangements on 
the globe. Time must reveal the destructive folly of 
such a delusion. All dispassionate men, who turn 
from the glowing page of the historian to the truthful 
reality of events in the history of England, must per- 
ceive the probable result of a persistence in her infa- 
tuated errors. 

But lest it may be said that this long Address is 
accompanied by a very long and very tedious letter, I 
hasten to bid you, 

Very cordially and truly, 

Adieu ! 

J. R. Tyson. 



HISTORY 



AS A BRANCH OF 



THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 



Gentlemen of the 

Belles Lettres Fellowship: 

The antiquity of the parent college invites me, on 
the anniversary of the birth of its oldest offspring, to a 
topic which is interwoven with the highest interests 
and duties of both. The age of your Society is not 
indeed coeval with the birth of the nation, but with 
the era of its political independence, as solemnly 
recognized by the treaty of Paris.* The idea of na- 
tional sovereignty includes the freedom of the in. 
tellect. But the mind of the people is in captivity 
if it acknowledge, or be, in fact, passive under the 
dominion of England. I would overthrow this spirit 
of mental subjection, which enervates or cripples its 
energies, by cultivating a taste and exciting an ambi- 
tion for a national literature. 

* The Belles Lettres Fcllow.ship was formed in 1783. 



10 }1I.ST(IKV A BRANCH OF 

No one is more sensible than tlie person who ad- 
dresses you, of the prevaihng excellence of Enghsh 
letters, of the depth by which they are marked, of 
the purity of tnste and splendor of genius, by which 
they are adorned. The honors shed by the philoso- 
phers and poets of Britain, fall to the lot of our in- 
heritance, and encircle, with a brilliant halo, the 
American name. But the family bond was sundered 
at the Revolution, and though from ancient habits and 
filial attachment we rejoice in her subsequent tri- 
umphs, and participate with the world in the common 
benefits of her achievements, we are entitled to none 
of the glories they confer. 

While commending this subject to your grave medi- 
tations and patriotic activity, let me suggest a theme, 
which duly improved, may constitute an element of 
a national system of letters. I allude to History in 
all ages and nations, with a view to the advancement 
of political and social science. This is a topic, gen- 
tlemen, which has peculiar claims upon your Society. 
An association for Belles Lettres studies, implies an 
appreciation of those arts of grace and beauty, over 
which the Muses preside ; — the predominance of a 
literary spirit and taste, in harmony with its impres- 
sive and elevated lessons. Clio, the muse of History, 
claims the rank of seniority as the oldest sister of 
the Nine. The subject then, upon which I propose 
to address you, is the philosophy of history as a 
branch of the national literature. 

In surveying the grounds of a domestic system of 
letters, all must be struck with the adaptation of such 



THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. ] ] 

a study to our wants and purposes, in a new hemi- 
sphere. The experiences of all limes and places must 
be invoked as the teachers of that people, who seek to 
govern themselves u])on a rational theoi-y of society 
and government. It is only the lessons unfolded by 
the annals of mankind, which can enable us to meet 
those unusual events, those sudden and complicated 
conjunctures, which time and the collisions of society 
must produce, under all the advantages of self-govern- 
ment, aided by universal popular light. 

The subject of government and manners would be 
surveyed, by our writers, from a new situation and 
with a powerful lens. The supreme law of the land, 
the lex legum of the confederacy, denies to the most 
exalted of her citizens "the grant of any title of no- 
bility." It is this feature which imparts shape and 
expression to the national visage. The ideas which 
gave birth to the republican principle, and the effect 
which this has produced upon the moral constitution 
of society, are necessary parts of its history. When 
we add the distinctive forms of our state and federal 
sovereignties, the colonial settlements, and the Indian 
tribes, a strange and novel complexion is spread over 
our domestic affairs. 

The social structure being thus upon a model of its 
own, man himself appears in a new guise and ascends 
to greater dignity. Where, from common wants and 
equality of condition, men are mutually dependent 
upon each other, the social .sympathies, and the chari- 
ties of neighborhood are more cultivated, and become 
more intense. Philanthropy, from being a principle. 



12 HISTORY A BRANCH OF 

becomes an instinct. Hence we trace to this country 
the origin of many, perhaps most of those schemes in 
behalf of afflicted and oppressed liumanity, which, of 
late years, have so ardently excited the attention of 
benevolent laborers in Europe. It is to us mankind 
are indebted for the principles of the Peace and Tem- 
perance societies, the mitigation of penal codes, the 
reform of prisons, and many other of the great moral 
movements of the present age. To science, in all its 
ministrations to use and convenience, the same re- 
mark may be applied. The quadrant, the lightning- 
rod, many of the manifold applications of steam-power, 
the electric telegraph, and a hundred other useful in- 
ventions and improvements, owe their existence to the 
practical tendencies of the national intellect, to the 
attrition of mind with mind, in the awakened activity 
of emulous or kindred intelligences. Here then may 
be collected the seeds, which, in the hands of the philo- 
sophic husbandman, are to be brought to maturity, and 
garnered as the choice fruits of a literary harvest. 
Here may be found the most teeming tract in a wide 
and almost boundless domain. Let us then take a 
glance at the uses and province of hi.s1ory, in order to 
discern the sphere and value of a department, which, 
in its responsibilities, its influence, and its scope, 
transcends any in the broad and diversified regions of 
literature. 

Not to know what has gone before us, says Cicero, 
is always to continue a child. He only on whose 
mind has been poured the genial treasures of history, 



THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 13 

has emerged from intellectual infancy, and started 
from the goal of childhood. If he has lived in other 
ages and nations than the age and nation in whicli he 
was born, he must have imbibed something of the 
mind and genius w\\h which each is impressed ; some 
food for reflection, some principle of practice, know- 
ledge, or refinement, which expands his nature and 
elevates his being. 

History sheds around the path a broad and distinct 
radiance, illuminating tlie present and pouring its 
beams into the future. The events of other ages so 
emit their bright lights and cast their gloomy shadows 
before us, that we foresee and realize the certainty of 
the future, in these images of the past. As we 
are not only watched by our cotemporaries, but are 
recorded and judged of by po.sterity, we have all the 
incitements which reason can add to the love of fame, 
to study those great events which the conduit-pipe 
of history can pour from the full reservoir of time. 
It is to this source, unmixed with the prejudices of 
the day, and free from those personal considerations 
which influence the judgment in active life, that the 
philosopher must look for the secret springs of motive, 
and for a key to unlock the mysteries of the human 
heart. 

It is from no vain or unmeaning reason, that man- 
kind have given to the Father of History an undying 
celebrity. Cicero informs us, in his Tusculan dispu- 
tations, that Scipio Africanus had always in his hand 
one of the works of Xenophon. If it be true that 
history is philosophy teaching by examples, the fame 



14 HISTORY A BRANCH OF 

of Herodotus and the practice of Scipio, are both ex- 
plamed. The school of example, says Bolingbroke, is 
the world, and the masters are history and experience. 
But that practical wisdom which may be acquired in 
story, has this superiority over the personal experience 
of ourselves and others. It is not liable to the objec- 
tion of being learnt at our own expense, and is less 
partial and imperfect. Experience, from the brevity 
of its span, is transient and incomplete. History, in 
its extensive survey, embraces the beginning and the 
end. The experience of a long life gives us only a 
few links of a continuous chain; but in history we 
see tlie whole concatenation, from the first opening to 
the final catastrophe. We see virtue rewarded and 
vice unmasked and punished; or, if death overtake 
the offender before the discovery of his misdeeds, we 
witness the retribution of historical justice executed 
in those eloquent denunciations of the historian, which 
condemn him to perpetual infamy. 

The application of general maxims to the conduct 
of life, or the reduction into practice of the abstract 
speculations of philosophy, is not suited to the inclina- 
tions, or is beyond the ordinary powers of the human 
mind. But examples derived from story, are instinct- 
ively apprehended ; the embodied truth is brought 
palpably before us. While a general principle or a 
sound maxim may pass unheeded, we cannot resist 
the potency of the conclusion which the facts combine 
to deduce; and those sentiments which are derived 
from historical materials, are engraved upon the mind 
and heart in characters too strong not to be applied. 



THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 15 

and too deep for obliteration. It is said of the teacliing 
of the ancient philosophers, that their doctrines exerted 
less influence over their disciples than their conversa- 
tions, and their conversations less than their personal 
example. 

Such being the important and pervading uses of 
history, it may not be a subject devoid of interest or 
entertainment, for us to glance at the feeble rays of 
its morning, as they dawned in a doubtful tvviliglit. 
For after all, the benefits of history very much depend 
upon the ability and fidelity of tlie historian. If his 
execution be lame or inadequate ; if, under the color 
of truth and impartiality, he present us with fiction 
or the narrative of a partisan, the dignity of his calling 
is at an end, his function is degraded, and we are ca- 
joled into the reception of an empty and delusive 
name. 

The historical knowledge of the father of history 
was extremely imperfect. He depended perhaps less 
upon books to which little credit was accorded, than 
upon actual observation and personal discovery. He 
tells us that Europe is longer than Asia and Africa 
united, and his descriptions of ji^ople are often quite 
as poetical as the fabulous accounts of the poels. He 
represents the highest pinnacles of Atlas in Africa, 
as wrapped in everlasting clouds, and as forming the 
pillars of heaven. His amusing descriptions of people 
with horses' heads, and others without heads at ail, 
partake rather of fable than chronicle. 

The ancient poetry of Greece conjured up an ideal 
race, the Hyperboreans, whom it originally placed be- 



16 HISTORY A BRANCH OF 

hind the celebrated and demi-barbarous range, called 
the Riphsean Mountains. In this sequestered spot, 
which was placed in the recesses of the North, are de- 
scribed a people sheltered by vast mountains from the 
rage of the elements, exempted from the disturbances of 
passion and the inroads of care, and exposed to no ill 
resulting from climate, disease, or death. Even Pliny 
finds the Hyperboreans, inhabiting the spot assigned 
to them by Grecian poetry, screened from every in- 
clement blast, and leading a happy life, exempt from 
grief, discord, sickness, old age, and mortality. Un- 
happily, however, he breaks the lovely picture which 
he had painted of human felicity, by informing us 
that the blest inhabitants of this region, satiated with 
enjoyment, at length throw themselves from a rock 
into the sea ! But their seat, from being originally at 
the foot of the Riphrean Mountains, was successively 
transferred by these poetical geographers and histo- 
rians to the banks of the Danube, thence westward, 
and finally to the northern extremity of Asiatic 
Russia ! 

But fable has not been confined to the ancient 
world. As if no region should be exempt from the 
intermixture of fiction with its early history, even our 
own country, our own Pennsylvania, has had its 
share. Campauius Holm, in his description of Nav 
S?reden, which was the name of Pennsylvania before 
the arrival of the Enghsh colonists, gives most amusing 
narrations of the country and its productions. This 
book deals in a romance as extravagant as the wonder- 
ful stunes of poetical antiquity. He describes, as 



THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. If 

swimming in the streams of Pennsylvania, fishes 
without heads, and the manetto fish, that spouts up 
water Hke a whale. He finds sea spiders as large as 
tortoises, and in our own woods he encounters two 
very different sorts of animated existence — the night- 
ingale and the lion ! He describes a prophetic grass, 
the spontaneous growth of the soil, by means of which 
a sick person can learn whether he will die or recover; 
and tells us that the country is inhabited with Indians 
black and vv'hite ! These, and many other mon- 
strosities, are related with all the gravity of veritable 
narrative. 

In the early ages of the world, the song of min- 
strelsy preserved or revived the memory of unusual 
and fanciful occurrences. When tradition was dim 
and indistinct, or the incident could be magnified by 
circumstances of wonder, the bard of the day would 
describe it according to the impressions made upon 
his poetic imagination. The flowers of fiction would 
delight a group of admiring auditors, who, listening to 
the song of warlike triumph, or of miraculous escape, 
would drink in those metaphors by which the bard 
knows how to entrance the feelings of an imaginative 
people. — But the recitals of Herodotus produced an 
effect which seldom falls within the power of the 
orator or the poet. The simple pathos of his descrip- 
tion drew tears from assembled Greece, and his nine 
books received the names of the Muses. But although 
a great improvement was made from the uncertainty 
of oral tradition, and the beautiful but exaggerated 
representations of bards and minstrels, yet the life and 
3 



18 HI.STI1RY A BRANCH OF 

soul of lustory were still nowhere to be seen. It was 
for later days — for a Livy and a Tacitus — to present 
the features of the periods they have selected, in a 
comprehensiveness and detail more consonant to the 
duty of the historian. But it will be seen perhaps, 
before I conclude, that it was reserved for an age sub- 
sequent to theirs, and for another covintry, to carry 
out to their legitimate extent the real objects and ulti- 
mate design of historic composition. 

Tradition may preserve the memory of the event- 
ful past, and the glory or the shame of ancestry. The 
bard, whether in the liumble form of minstrelsy and 
ballad, or in the soul-stirring and more elevated strains 
of epic poetry, may perpetuate the traditionary story, 
and, subjecting it to the crucible of his fervid and 
patriotic imagination, transmute what is only unusual 
and striking, into the wonderful and marvellous. 
Tradition had preserved the Trojan war, and the 
consequent dispersion of the vanquished chiefs. Min- 
strelsy had fed the fire of patriotic pride by recount- 
ing the conquest. And Homer only completed a pic- 
ture, whose faint outlines had been shadowed forth by 
the tale-teller and the minstrel. 

But the bard may not only illustrate the character 
of a people, but, by the power of his verse, inspire 
new impulses, and give a new complexion to the dis- 
positions of a nation. He thus becomes a historical 
personage himself, and such a part of the age, that no 
delineation of it is complete without him. Among 
the ancients, he travelled from place to place, singling 
out some incident of individual greatness or national 



THK NATIONAL I.ITKR ATL'R K. 19 

glory for poetical commemoration. In the middle 
ages of Europe, he kept alive the memory of illus- 
trious deeds, and excited in the people the sentiments 
of martial enterprise and patriotic devotion. Such was 
the influence which the bards exercised over an ardent 
people, both by their services and their genius, that 
they enjoyed the homage of great personal considera- 
tion, and social immunities. Alfred, in the disguise 
of a harper, could gain admission into the Danish 
camp, and the bai'd Blondel, by his ingenuity, sought 
out the concealment of Richard the First, and restored 
the captive monarch to liberty. The edict proclaimed 
by Edward the First, after his conquest of Wales, 
that all the bards of that country should be put to 
death, not only argues his own cruelty, but displays 
the importance ascribed to the class. He knew that 
his conquests could not be retained in a country where 
tbe spirit of independence was kept alive by those 
martial and patriotic songs, which celebrated the ex- 
ploits of their fathers, and the immemorial freedom of 
their fatherland. The poems of Ossian, handed down 
to us from the antiquity of a remote age, and little' 
impaired by the many generations through which 
they have passed, only show the sacred value which 
was attached to these effusions, and the fidelity with 
which they are preserved. 

Though the departments of the bard and the his- 
torian are essentially different, and excellence in each 
depends upon opposite qualities, yet poetry may pre- 
serve many lineaments of an age, for which we would 
search elsewhere in vain. Genius is not always con- 



20 HISTORY A BRANCH OF 

trolled by the transactions or the eras of history. It 
goes beyond the bounds of actual existence, and creates 
a world of its own. Shakspeare, to whose mighty 
power all history was made subservient, compressed 
ages into hours. Dr. Johnson has alike felicitously 
and poetically said, 

" Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, 
And panting time toiled after him in vain." 

But with all these inaccuracies, the dramas of the 
great bard present to us many a portrait of admirable 
fidelity, and unfold many a secret motive which are 
nowhere to be found in the pages of regular narrative. 
Sir Walter Scott has given to us, in the form of fic- 
titious compositions, some of the fine.st truths of his- 
tory, and those portions of it too, which are least 
accessible to the ordinary inquirer. He has redeemed 
it from the imputation of a dry and unattractive study, 
and taught mankind to value those portions of Scot- 
tish story, which are less observed, because apparently 
of less importance. 

* But it is not to the poet, the dramatist, or the 
romance writer, that the historian chiefly looks for his 
materials. He must patiently explore the narratives 
of the annalist, and treasure the personal descriptions 
of the memoir-writer and the biographer. The dry de- 
tails of the one are not more useful to his purpose, than 
the traits of character and incident are of the other. 
They not only relieve the tedious succession of unin- 
teresting events, but they subserve, in an eminent 
degree, the objects he has in view. The character of 



THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 21 

a people may be exhibited in an anecdote ; — the rela- 
tion of personal adventure may present, in miniature, 
the characteristic features of an age. While the ob- 
jects of biography are different from those of history, 
the character of the man, or an incident of his life, may 
illustrate the story of his times. It would be wrong, 
for example, to suppose that the voluntary return of 
Regulus to Carthage, when he knew the tortures that 
awaited him there, was owing to the peculiar and 
obstinate temperament of the man. It was the proud 
and stubborn virtue of the Roman of that age, which 
neither the ties of nature, the entreaties of friends, 
nor the terror of protracted and ingenious suffering 
could overcome. 

The noble conduct of the Lady Catherine Douglas, 
on the occasion of the assassination of James the First 
of Scotland, presents a memorable instance of female 
valor and heroic loyalty. It is a proof of the effects 
which times of violence produce upon character, and 
of the enthusiastic attachment which the virtues of a 
orreat monarch are capable of inspiring, even in the 
hearts of the young and beautiful. The murderers 
of James found him in a Dominican Convent, without 
his body guard. The staple of the door having been 
removed so as readily to admit the ingress of the con- 
spirators, the Lady Douglas discovered the fatal open- 
ing. She immediately thrust her arm into the staple 
to oppose their admission. But what resistance could 
the slender arm of a delicate woman, oppose to a nu- 
merous band of desperate assassins? They burst 
open the door, shattering in pieces the fragile arm 



22 HISTORY A BRANCH OK 

which was so generously interposed for the safety of 
her sovereign, and rushed over her fallen body, sword 
in hand, upon the king. A manly resistance was all 
he could oppose to superiority of numbers, aided by 
desperation of purpose. He fell under the repeated 
strokes of his assailants. 

An instance of a different kind, exhibiting remark- 
able address, in a female, occurred in our own coun- 
try, during the war of the American Revolution. It 
may be cited as characteristic of that memorable pe- 
riod, and of the ingenuity and boldness inspired by a 
sense of danger, and an engrossing sentiment of pa- 
triotism. In the language of Addison's Cato, 

" Virtues wbich shun the day, and lie concealed 
In the smooth season and the calms of life/' 

prove themselves in the stormy times of emergency and 
peril. The magnitude of the stake, evolves those dor- 
mant faculties whiofc show the native powers of the 
soul. — General Greene was anxious to send a mes- 
senger to General Sumter, (who was at some distance 
on the Wataree,) to join him in an attack on Lord 
Rawdon. The difficulty was to iind a man who was 
bold enough to engage in the enterprise. The inter- 
mediate country was full of peril to the traveller on 
such a mission. At length a young girl, named 
Emily Geiger, proposed to carry the letter and mes- 
sage to Sumter. A letter was written and the con- 
tents communicated to her. Mounted on hor.seback 
in the direction of Sumter's camp, she was over- 
taken on the second day of her journey, by the scouts 



THE NATIONAL LlTERATURfc;. 23 

of Rawdon. The English officer, from a spirit of gal- 
lantry, declined to search her at the time of the cap- 
ture, but having placed her in a private apartment, 
he sent for an old Tory matron to make the proper in- 
vestigation. No sooner was the rebel maiden alone, 
than she withdrevi^ her letter from its hiding-place, 
and ate it up, piece by piece. When the matron ar- 
rived, all evidence of the girl's errand being destroyed, 
she was restored to liberty; and, pursuing her journey 
by a circuitous route, she arrived at Sumter's camp, 
and communicated the secret of her expedition. — The 
daring intrepidity with which this young American 
maiden braved the perils of a wilderness, peopled by 
rude soldiers and remorseless savages ; the presence 
of mind she displayed in the pressing moment of trial; 
the resumption of her journey and its final accomplish- 
ment, only embody a sentiment and spirit by no 
means confined to the breast of Emily Geiger, but 
participated in by thousands of her fair fellow-country- 
women, in that hour of danger. 

We are not to be led, on the other hand, too hastily 
into the supposition that a striking trait, or an insu- 
lated example of commanding goodness or atrocious 
criminality, elucidates the prevailing dispositions of 
a period, a sect, or a country When Catharine de 
Medicis persuaded Charles IX. to murder the Hugue- 
nots of France, we must attribute it to the dictates of 
individual cruelty, rather than to the prevalence of a 
sympathetic feeling among his subjects. The horrible 
massacre of St. Bartholomew was intended to be uni- 
versal over the nation. Orders were issued for this 



24 HISTORY A BRANCH OF 

purpose to the Catholic governors of the several pro- 
vinces ; but these bloody mandates did not meet with 
a passive obedience. Many of the governors refused 
to comply. The Viscount d'Orthe, instead of obeying 
the order, had the courage to write to his majesty, that 
there were many good soldiers in his garrison, but not 
one executioner. One of the governors used, in reply 
to this infamous command, the following remarkable 
language : " Sire, I have too much reverence for your 
majesty not to persuade myself that the order I have 
received, must be forged; but if (which Heaven for- 
bid,) it should really be the order of your majesty, I 
have too much respect for the personal character of 
my sovereign, to obey it." 

But the historian, though he avails himself of the 
labors of the annalist, and the incidents of the bio- 
grapher, has higher duties to perform than either. 
"What seems merely curious in itself, or preserved in 
a private cabinet, as a family treasure ; what is accu- 
mulated among the confused medley of MSS. in a 
Historical Society, are the great objects of his pursuit 
and investigation. That which upon a superficial 
view looks disjointed and separate, having no connec- 
tion with the regular chain of historical events, per- 
haps may contain in itself the uniting link of a mass 
of fragments. 

It is the province of the historian to relate the 
events, depict the manners, and exhibit the spirit of 
the age. All that may prove auxiliary to his design, 
must be explored with patience and assiduity. He is 
to admit of no secondary evidence upon subjects which 



THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 25 

are susceptible of higher verification. He cannot re- 
peat what he finds printed in books, however respect- 
able their character, without referring to original 
sources of light. Even among original documents, 
he must collate the different versions, which the acci- 
dental inaccuracies of cotemporary pens, or the wil- 
ful perversions which party spirit may have intro- 
duced, for the distortion or suppression of truth. The 
annahst may amuse, the poet may delight, and the 
orator may astonish ; the musician, the painter, and 
the sculptor may contribute to embellish the age 
which they refine ; but it is the historian who delin- 
eates their general effect, and exhibits the real impress 
which they make upon the society around them. 
Revolutions may uproot, and wnr spread carnage and 
" cry havoc," but the Genius of History must preside 
with a steady and collected eye over the troubled and 
turbulent scene. 

But with abundant materials before him, the histo- 
rian is sometimes found to be engulfed in error ; 
and whether owing to his authorities, or the medium 
through which they are viewed, the results are some- 
times the same. Such is the imperfection of human 
nature or the voluntary perversity of the human mind, 
that the phantom of error is sometimes found to pre- 
side at \h.e fountain, and to pollute the stream through 
its whole course. It is then the nice province of the 
historian to refine the waters of their impurity. But 
sometimes the original sources of knowledge are of 
indisputable verity ; but the mind of the explorer has 
received a tinge of prejudice, or its powers of i)hiloso- 
4 



26 HISTORY A BRANCH OF 

phy lie prostrate at the slirine of party spirit. Inat- 
tention or laziness, inadequate inquiry or accidental 
misapprehension, may lend their influences to pervert 
facts, misjudge motives, and discolor character. From 
one or other of these, and sometimes from the com- 
bined force of their union, it happens that the face of 
history may be veiled in doubt and clouded with un- 
certainty. Well might Lord Orford exclaim, after 
dwelling upon the sad evidences which his own expe- 
rience and studies had suggested : " Oh, read me not 
history, for that. I kno7V to be false !" In despair that 
he could not produce an authentic narrative, the clear- 
sighted and philosophical Raleigh, it is said, com- 
mitted the manuscript of his great historical work to 
the flames, when he heard the contradictory accounts of 
eye-witnesses to a fact, which occurred in the vicinity 
of his prison. 

Other causes combine to interfere with the integrity 
of history. A blind and uninformed love of home ; an 
education, which, by infusing narrow and sectional 
principles, weds the citizen to the follies of his fore- 
fathers, and consecrates to him that scheme of policy, 
which, among another people, he would be the first to 
condemn. 

The feelings of home, and country, and kindred, 
disturb the mental equilibrium, and are enemies to 
that elevated cosmopolitan philosophy which it is the 
duty of the historian to cultivate. — The lofty spirit of 
the English nation, the pride of a Saxon ancestry, — 
as remarkable for bravery as for independence, — has 
perpetuated a dispute about the meaning of a single 



THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 27 

word, employed in connection with a transaction whicli 
happened eight hundred years ago. The sturdy Nor- 
mans, who accompanied WiUiam to England in the 
11th century, and assisted in the overthrow of the 
English army, at the battle of Hastings, called him a 
conqueror ; but the indomitable pride of the Saxon 
race cannot brook the idea of conquest, and define the 
term to mean, in the Norman law, merely an acqidsi- 
tion. This controversy, devoid of all practical interest 
at the present time, is often revived, and promises to 
furnish topics for the ingenuity, and food for the pas- 
sions, of many succeeding ages. 

Another form of this same spirit is exhibited in an 
attempt, which has been recently made, to deprive 
Columbus of that honor, so justly his due, of giving 
birth to a new world. The Society of Northern 
Antiquaries, at Copenhagen, have, with true anti- 
quarian zeal, brought out of their archives, covered 
with the thick dust of ages, a body of Icelandic ma- 
nuscripts, which prove that some early voyagers had, 
at a period antecedent to the age of Columbus, found 
their way to the northern shores of tliis continent. 
A Runic stone has been discovered on the western 
coast of Greenland, bearing an inscription, dated in 
the 12th century. They have established the sterile 
fact, that, without object or design, except gain, these 
navigators landed upon our coast, being probably dri- 
ven thither by the force of the elements, which they 
had neither the skill nor the science to resist. But 
what is the object of all this ? It is said to be in aid 
of historical knowledge; and it is so, in bringing to 



28 HISTORY A BRANCH OF 

light a fact which had lain buried for centuries, in the 
dark obscurity of the Scandinavian archives. But is 
not the question in truth now made to despoil Spain 
of her vestment of glory, for the purpose oi present- 
ing it to Denmark^ Such an attempt to disinter the 
long-buried memories of rude seamen, the fit compa- 
nions only of a rude age, reminds one of Cowper's in- 
dignant exclamation: — 

" Oh fond attempt to give a deathless lot 
To names ignoble, born to be forgot." 

It must be admitted that the ambition of national fame 
is the spur which has excited into so much activity 
and perseverance these pains-taking spirits of the 
north. But, while we applaud their zeal, and admire 
the monument which tlieir patient labor and patriotic 
enthusiasm have enabled them to erect, we cannot 
acquiesce in their deductions. The discovery of these 
navigators, if such it may be called, was dead and 
unproductive in its effects. They could not perhaps 
have pointed or led the way to the scene of their dis- 
covery; — while that of Columbus, who had no know- 
ledge of their exploit, or, if he had, who could not profit 
by their imperfect account, was the light-house which 
guided subsequent adventurers, and was the epoch at 
which began all the astonishing results which have 
followed. 

It cannot be denied that the vain-glory which has 
proved so inimical to historical truth, in other lands, 
has not been without its influence in this country. 
With less reason than other nations for controverted 



THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 29 

points in their early history, the influences of sectional 
feeling and party prejudice have introduced many. 
The dark night of traditionary ignorance was past, 
when our ancestors buffeted the waves of the wide 
Atlantic, to fix their residence amid the fearful soli- 
tudes of the western wilderness. They were men 
who knew the value of permanent records, and com- 
mitted their actions, and the principles of their policy, 
to writing. But why is it that the characters, and 
even the acts, of the early Quakers of Pennsylvania, 
and the Puritans of New England, are, at this day, 
matters of doubt, or controversy ? Not, certainly, for 
want of clear and indubitable documentary evidence, 
but from the mist of prejudice through which they 
are viewed. The plain narrative is honest, and im- 
possible to be mistaken; but glosses and explanations 
are interposed, to disguise the truth, or intercept its 
impression. 

We hear abundant praise assigned to Pennsylvania 
for her steady faith and constant benevolence to the 
Indian, and yet 7vhere, among the thousand hills and 
valleys of the State, are we to look for that numerous, 
valiant, and generous race who once roamed the happy 
and undisputed masters of the very spot on which we 
stand? They are gone, — either fled or murdered! — 
either leaving their unburied bones to whiten the 
plains, a memorial to heaven of their wrongs, or leav- 
ing their execrations with those western tribes to 
which they have escaped for security ! Explain it 
as we may, we stand convicted upon the historian's 
page of perfidy and violence, of heartless encroach- 



30 HISTORY A BRANCH OF 

ment and plain injustice. To mention nothing else, 
the walking purchase of 1737, and the subsequent 
massacre at Lancaster, tarnish the fair fame of Penn- 
sylvania benevolence. No; the praise which is 
awarded to Pennsylvania must be confined to that 
portion of her history which expired at the death of 
William Penn, whose policy towards these injured 
people was characterized by invariable kindness, sin- 
cere friendship, and munificent generosity. 

To the pilgrims who landed on the rock of Ply- 
mouth, is attributed nearly every virtue under heaven. 
A public writer, among their descendants of the pre- 
sent day, would perhaps endanger his reputation, if, 
at an anniversary celebration, he pronounced aught 
respecting them but extravagant eulogy. And yet 
history has recorded what cannot be gainsayed, that 
respectable as were most in rigid morality and culti- 
vated intellect, zealous as they were in the cause of 
education and attentive to the orthodoxy of the Christ- 
ian church, their lives present little that we can love, 
their piety little that is attractive. Their religion 
being so mingled with their politics as to be insepara- 
ble, became bigoted, selfish, and exclusive. It sought 
out objects of vengeance in the infidel Indian and the 
heretical Baptist and Quaker; and while it retaliated 
upon the one, with ingenious refinements, all the hor- 
rors of savage warfare, it looked to banishment and 
the gibbet as the only true modes of reforming the 
pertinacious errors of the others. But I refer to the 
fact merely to show how difficult it is to winnow 
the truth out of error when the most favorable cir- 



THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 31 

cumstances exist — but for the bias of education and 
locality — for its complete and unalloyed development. 

It is one of the most difficult tasks of the historian, 
anxious to display the truth, to resist the sinister in- 
fluences of that blind and undistinguishing veneration 
for domestic institutions, which requires him to tell 
the tale of history in such a manner, as to quadrate 
with ill-informed preconception, early prejudice, or 
imperfect inquiry. But no man is fitted for so exalted 
an undertaking, who cannot, regardless of the bicker- 
ings of party spirit, and the folly of sectional predi- 
lection, enter into the intellectual heart of the nation; 
live with the people and the age of which he treats; 
and portray, with the fidelity of the painter, without 
his embellishments, every line of its moral counte- 
nance. The elevation of his studies, if pursued in obe- 
dience to the impulses of a liberal and cultivated mind, 
will raise him above the groveling mists of place and 
party to a purer atmosphere and a loftier region. 

But the duty of the historian, in the execution of 
his task, is yet to be considered. Is it to represent 
merely the political acts of a nation, the lives of its 
rulers, and the wars in which they happen to be en- 
gaged? "What beside these is done in most of the 
chronicles that are written? One would suppo.se, in 
reading the most celebrated historians of ancient or 
modern times, that the whole community were intent 
upon the political regulation of their atfairs; in dwell- 
ing upon the virtues or the vices of their sovereigns ; 
or in contending with their enemies in the field of 
battle. The descriptions of conflicts and sieges are 



32 HISTORY A DKANCH OF 

drawn out with such prolixity of detail as to allow 
little space for the practical lessons of private and so- 
cial virtue. 

The heroism of antiquity has sunk deep into the 
breast of the classical student. He revels in the reci- 
tals of blood and carnage. He reads them with avidity. 
He awaits with breathless impatience the fearful strug- 
gle. He figures to himself the daring of the onset, 
and hears the clang of weapons as the armies join in 
combat. This taste for military prowess, this admi- 
ration of military glory, has been ministered to from 
the time of Homer to that of Walter Scott, whose 
high-wrought pictures of the battle-field can never be 
forgotten by those who have pored over his bewitch- 
ing page. The historian caters for an universal appe- 
tite, when he follows his hero, with fond enthusiasm, 
from battle to battle, and exhibits him as a spectacle 
worthy of all admiration, in his garments rolled in 
blood. 

The opinions, no less than \.he practice of mankind, 
upon the subject of jvar, have been undergoing a 
gradual but progressive change. Its sanguinary and 
abhorrent features, — its want of all recommendation 
upon the score of reason or expediency, — have made 
good as well as wise men feelingly re-echo the elo- 
quent invocation of the great bard, 

" Oh irar, thou son of hell ! 
Whom aiujry heavens Jo make their minister." 

The historian, may now be called upon to cele- 
brate less the murderous exploits of some rude chief- 



THE NATIONAL LITERATURK. 33 

tain or ambitious potentate, than the noiseless tri- 
umphs of moral science, the progress of mind, and 
the achievements of philanthropy. Decorate these 
with the gems of eloquence, and canonize them with 
poetry, and they will possess charms quite as attract- 
ive and exciting as the dazzling, but false glare which 
invests the arts of human slaughter. 

In another aspect, time has altered the objects and 
enlarged the province of history. Frederick of Prussia 
called the union of numbers, philosophy. It required 
an alliance of kings to protect their authority from the 
aspiring ambition and mighty genius of Bonaparte. 
Out of that philosophy have sprung new duties, which 
the historian of this country cannot but know and ap- 
preciate. His function is less to exhibit the lives of 
rulers or statesmen, than the essence or concentrated 
spirit of their times. The numerous instances of pri- 
vate, and even obscure virtue which every nation pre- 
sents, in the retired walks of its society, speak to that 
countless multitude of readers who do not aspire to be 
either rulers or statesmen. A mere regal biography 
will not satisfy the wants of mankind. The page of 
history must reflect a more perfect image of the mind 
and genius of the nation at large. 

It is a natural inquiry in this connection, whether 
any writer has arisen, who fills up the idea which 
is here presented, of the duty of the historian. 
Having referred to a few of the numerous controverted 
points in history, I will now speak of the imperfections 
of particular authors, and of those whose pages illus- 
trate the objects and province of the historian. 



34 IIISTHKY A URANCII (iK 

Of the many popular works which abound, per- 
haps the mistakes of Hume are as much to be de- 
plored as those of any other writer in the language. 
With a spirit of philosopliical investigation, he com- 
bines acuteness in the examination of historical evi- 
dence, and a felicity of style above all praise. But a 
vein of infidelity runs through his page, which im- 
pairs its usefulness and mars its beauty. It is some- 
where related, that his reign of Elizabeth was origi- 
nally written in consonance with what he believed to 
be the truth, but being admonished by his publisher, 
it was suppressed, and the life which appears in his 
history was substituted. A similar train of remark is 
suggested in regard to Gibbon, the classical splendor 
of whose diction is a poor succedaneum for the want 
of Cliristian faith, and tlie perversion of the accumu- 
lated evidences within his reach, of the divine cha- 
racter of its author. The names of Robertson, Mack- 
intosh, and Ilallam, are associated with all that is 
profound in erudition, faithful in narrative, and beau- 
tiful in performance. But they deal so exclusively 
with the transactions of states and kingdoms, that we 
almost forget that private persons played any part in 
the great drama of society. Event succeeds event 
with the solemnity of a dead march, and the actors 
are brought before us with such stateliness of tread 
as to remind one of a dance of the dead. 

Different from these, and possessing, in a higher de- 
gree, the shining qualities of its predecessors, is the 
popular history, only partially finished, of Thomas 
Babington Macauluy. As a historian, he too often 



THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 35 

sacrifices fidelity at the shrine of antithesis, and jus- 
tice on the altar of epigram. Delighting in striking 
attitudes, in strong contrasts, and in vivid coloring, 
he overlooks the possibility that any other than an ex- 
treme view will satisfy the rigor of historical justice. 
The grand doctrine, the fundamental and pervading 
spirit of his history is unfolded in a single sentence at 
the beginning. "I shall recount," says he, " the errors 
which in a few months alienated a loyal gentry and 
priesthood from the house of Stuart." The loyal 
gentry of the historian comprised that portion of 
England which the Barons in arms represented against 
King John, when, as valiant champions for the rights 
of their order, they wrested from the monarch the 
Magna Charta ; — a document which enlarged upon 
all kinds of liberties but popular rights, those rights 
which immediately interested the great body of the 
people of England. Upon these, that celebrated state 
paper, the palladium, so-called, of English liberties, 
was silent. — Every curtailment of royalty is not an 
accession to popular privileges. If the monarch be 
disrobed of any of his regalia, it is less the people than 
the nobles who are enriched with the spoils. — In the 
genuine spirit of the Barons of Runnyinede, Mr. Ma- 
caulay is as jealous of the prerogative and even of the 
office of a king, as he is inimical to the ascendency 
of the popular voice. Intent only upon the conse- 
quence of the nobility, the gentry, and the opulent 
classes of commoners, he is supercilious towards the 
working classes of the community, whose rising con- 
dition ho watches with alarm, and would check with 



36 HISTORY A BRANCH OF 

insolence. He seems to have imbibed and adopted the 
contemptuous sentiment of the great poet: — 

" Wliat the people but a herd confused, 

A miscellaneous rabble, who extol 

Things vulgar" — * * * 
" Of whom to be dispraised, wore no small praise."* 

To these preferences of taste, to these peculiarities 
of opinion, we owe, in large measure, the instances 
which lie scattered over his pages, of distorted facts, 
erroneous conclusions, exaggerated description, and 
personal injustice. — The caustic opponent of civil de- 
spotism in Charles the First, he is the ingenious and 
adroit apologist of military despotism in Cromwell. 
He seems to admire in the Protector, those traits 
which he detests and brands with infamy in the king. 
If the Stuart was insincere and hypocritical, was not 
Cromwell also a deceiver and dissembler? If Charles 
levied money unconstitutionally for the national de- 
fence, did not Oliver raise al:)undant supplies at tlic 
point of the bay 07iet ^ If the king inflicted injustice 
upon his subjects, what was the amount of property 
taken by Cromwell from the long catalogue of twenty- 
six hundred and fifty plundered royalists? Without 
a motive to veil the defects, or magnify the greatness 
of either of these memorable names in history, I ex- 

* Vide Third Book of Milton's Paradise Regained. As this 
language is put into the mouth of our Saviour in his controversy with 
Satan, we may presume that it expresses the real sentiments of Mil- 
ton. Opposition to the king, among the men of the Commonwealth, 
did not necessarily imply a sympathy with and preference for the 
people. 



THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 37 

hibit at once the injustice of tlie historian, by the sum- 
mary statement of an impartial account between them. 
The Protector's alUances with the nobihty awaken in 
the historian all the affinities of party, and kindle in 
him a glow of admiration, as warm as it is blind and 
undistinguishing. 

This aristocratic tendency, this opposition to 
popular rights, is observable throughout the history. 
The writer admires the wealth, elegance, and luxury 
of the present day, and conceals, under a decept- 
ive mantle, the various forms of its wickedness and 
folly. He extols it above a more simple age, in which 
less misery and crime existed among the lower classes, 
and less vice and effeminacy in the higher. — No un- 
prejudiced and clear-minded historian would praise 
that system of affairs, which, for years, has been driv- 
ing away the small tenantry of England, and concen- 
trating real property in tiie hands of a few. The De- 
serted Village of the plaintive Goldsmith, is no imagi- 
nary picture of the evils which it so touchingly de- 
plores. The small and happy landholders have nearly 
disappeared. Their places are occupied by estates 
stretching miles in extent, the abodes of luxury and 
splendor surpassing those of oriental princes. Among 
the millions of English husbandmen who cultivate the 
soil, the whole number o{ freeholders has been reduced 
by this depopulating waste to about thirty-five thou- 
sand. These seats of magnificence are protected by 
law in the hands of their lordly possessors, against tlie 
demands, the plaints, and the writs of creditors. 

No unprejudiced and clear-sighted historian would 



38 HISTORY A BRANCH OF 

praise the spirit of distant war, when its noblest con- 
quests are purchased at the price of splendid misery 
at home and of unpitying desolation abroad. The na- 
tional debt has been incurred and expended chiefly in 
war. The interest on this enormous charge, and the 
extravagance in all the departments of government, 
render necessary an annual taxation, the aggregate of 
wliich would not only pay the interest, but the prin- 
cipal of the debt of Pennsylvariia, ten times over. 

It would almost suffocate a prudent Englishman 
who calmly fixes his eye on the future, to name the 
enormous burden of eight hundred millions of pounds 
sterling, as the national debt of his country. All the 
coin of the world, if collected together in the vaults 
of the exchequer, would be insufficient to pay it. Her 
annual obhgations amount to thirty millions of interest 
and fifty millions of ordinary expenditure. The vast re- 
sources of the empire are drained and found unequal to 
these ruinous burdens. National bankruptcy is post- 
poned or prevented by adding to the principal debt* 

Is it wisdom or prudence then to pander to the 
spirit of war abroad, or to minister to an expensive and 
magnificent oligarchy at home? Is it wise or prudent 
to .startle the judgment of the country with the paradox, 
that a national debt is a national blessing? A bless- 
ing which mortgages or encumbers every item of an 
Englishman's property, wastes his income, and de- 
prives him of his wages. Like the ble.s.sing of origi- 
nal sin, it is bequeathed to a man with his existence, 

* Vide j\.ppeui.li.\, note 1. 



THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 39 

it attaches at his birth, it makes him a debtor and 
dehnquent in his cradle.* 

No unprejudiced and clear-minded historian will 
join the chorus of interested demagogues, in chanting 
the praises of "merry England" and "happy land," 
because one side of the national picture certainly pre- 
sents humanity in its most attractive and beautiful 
forms, and exhibits the combined wonders of art 
and nature, embellished to the highest point of ima- 
gined perfection. English philanthropy may observe, 
through a benevolent telescope, the hand of oppression 
and the abuses of law, in distant regions. But in 
looking over the world, it may not be able to descry 
an abuse or an evil, which, to some extent, does not 
exist unredressed in its own. 

It has been aptly observed of England, that on one 
side she displays the glitter of Aladdin's palace, and 
on the other reveals the horrors of Ugolino's temple 
of famine. The starving masses in Ireland ; the 
abuses in the manufacturing aiad mining districts, in 
England ; the ignorance, wretchedness, and immoral- 
ity, in both, seem to be either unworthy of notice or 
invisible to the historian. His prejudice veils, or his 
prismatic fancy discolors, this side of the national por- 
trait. While in England the income tax shows pro- 
perty yielding two hundred millions of pounds ster- 
ling a year, the poor-law returns establish the fact, 
that one-seventh of the entire population of the two 
kingdoms subsist upon public charity. Though mil- 

* Vide Appendix, note "2. 



40 llISTORy A BRANCH OK 

lions were raised in Parliament and the United States, 
in 1847, to relieve the necessities of the Irish, two 
hundred and fifty thousand persons perished by star- 
vation, and as many more were driven, by the anti- 
cipated horrors of a similar fate, into exile. Such is 
the extremity of distress in that unhappy island, that 
famished survivors are known to devour the bodies 
of their deceased companions and friends, who liave 
fallen victims to famine or despair. 

If, instead of the partiality of a whig declaiming 
against the tories and radicals, Mr. Macaulay had 
written, with his own great power, a sober and philo- 
sophical history of England ; if he had treated his 
topics with the judicial and unimpassioned spirit of the 
bench rather than ^vith the logic of a champion at the 
bar, future generations would regard his sparkling 
volumes as the richest legacy of the present age. If, 
instead of presenting to us the glitter of nobility, he 
had blazoned the homelier virtues of the people; if he 
had dragged to light the abuses which prevent their 
exaltation ; if he had shown that extreme poverty in 
the many, must co-exist with extreme private wealth 
and luxury in the few ; if he had, in honest straight- 
forwardness, avowed that thousands never hear the 
name of God, but in profanity ; that millions habitually 
neglect the divine services of the Sabbath; he would 
have reached the ear and thrilled the heart of Britain; 
he would have inscribed iiis name in blazing characters 
of light upon one of the pillars of that temple, which 
a nation's gratitude erects to the undying memory of 
its benefactors. It better suited his genius to expa- 



THE NATIONAL LITERATUKb;. 41 

tiate on the glories of a revolution wliich secured a 
peaceful dominion and a submissive people, and to 
diversify the interest of his eloquent pages by drag- 
ging into notoriety or fame those whom posterity have 
long since forgotten or condemned, and of arraigning, 
under the blackest imputations, some of the fairest 
and proudest historical names of England. The 
ashes of smouldering or extinguished fires have been 
raked up, and the buried griefs of centuries have ap- 
peared within the pale glimpses of the moon, galvan- 
ized into the hue and semblance of a renewed exist- 
ence. But let me pass to other authors. 

Though not properly a historian, I cannot omit the 
name of Washington Irving, as one that must ever be 
pronounced by an American with mingled sensations 
of pride and delight. That honored name is inter- 
woven with the literary, legendary, and biographical 
glories of our land. Not content with hallowing; a 
thousand spots in the great State of his birth, and in 
the country of his ancestors, he has, by the witchery 
of his classic wand, deepened the shadowy interest of 
the Spanish legend, and surrounded, by the power of 
his magic pencil, the memory of Columbus with bays 
of a richer tint and a brighter verdure. Without de- 
tracting from the excellence of any portion of his 
various writings, I may point you to this biography 
as a historical work of such sterling and enduring 
value, that, if the long catalogue of his other labors 
were blotted out of existence, it alone would secure to 
him an immortality of literary fame. But let me 
hasten to Bancroft and Prescott. 



42 HISTORY A URANLH OF 

Mr. Bancroft has produced a history of the United 
Slates, so far as it has advanced, of high desert, for 
copious and elegant diction, competent learning, and 
considerable fidelit}'. It could scarcely be expected 
that a work Mhich embraces so many tlelicate topics, 
should in all its details be free from defect; but as it 
stands, it must be admitted to be a proud monument, 
not only of his own genius, but that of his country. 

Of Prescott, it may not be easy to speak towards 
the close of this address, in terms which his high 
merits deserve. In the history of Ferdinand and Isa- 
bella, especially, the reader will see exemplified many 
of the duties which a historian of the present age 
assumes. The fulness of his information and the elo- 
quent style in which it is embodied, leave us at a loss 
which mo.st to admire, — the splendor of the subject, 
or the felicity of its execution. It is that epoch of Eu- 
rope, when, rather than in that of Charles the Fifth, as 
supposed by Robertson, the light of civilization had 
dawned, and events were begun to be developed, whose 
impression upon the condition of mankind was to be 
not transient, but permanent. It was the age when 
the different provinces of Spain were united under a 
single rule; — it was the age when the Moors were 
driven out of Granada, which they had rendered the 
seat of elegance and luxury for seven centuries ; 
and it was the age when Columbus, under the au- 
spices of Isabella, prosecuted to completion his im- 
mortal enterprise. It was the age, too, of Ximenes, 
tlie greatest statesman, and of Gonsalvo, the great- 
est captain of modern times; — but as if no great good 



THE NATIONAL LITEIIATI'UK. 43 

can exist in human affairs, without its correlative and 
accompanying evil, it was the age of that terrific in- 
strument of oppression and cruelty, the Spanish In- 
quisition ; and the age of the expatriation of the 
devoted Jew. With a subject as vast as it is attract- 
ive and splendid, Prescott had to search in foreign 
languages, and amid forgotten and contradictory au- 
thorities, for his materials. And, as if to convince 
him of the fatuity of his attempt, his sight became 
affected before he had advanced far into his undertak- 
ing; and he at length became totally blind. Dr. 
Johnson, in his life of Milton, refers to the hopeless- 
ness of an attempt to compile a history, from various 
authors, with the aid of other eyes than one's own. It 
was the unhappy fate of Prescott to encounter such 
an obstacle. It was his superior and re.solute genius 
which enabled him to overcome it. The student of 
Ferdinand and Isabella, after following the historian 
into camps and courts, among the bards and prose 
writers of that prolific period, and into the reces.ses of 
Spanish society, having closed his book, will wonder 
at the accomplishment of so stupendous a labor, and 
under circumstances so well' calculated to fill the 
stoutest heart with dismay. He will picture the au- 
thor who has contributed so much to his instruction 
and delight, as sitting, day after day, in the solitude 
of his study, groping his tedious way, with imperfect 
aid, among a mass of huge MSS. and unheard-of 
tomes, — listening with strained ear to catch the un- 
couth sounds of an obsolete Spanish phraseology, and 
through many a weary hour, striving in vain to ascer- 



44 HISTORY A BRANCH OF 

tain the meaning of tlie author; — now abandoning his 
task in despair, and then renewing it with increased 
alacrity and vigor. But Prescott has shown himself 
to be no ordinary man. He persevered to the end ; and 
though it required a time equal in duration to the Tro- 
jan war, — a period oiten years, — to finish his work, yet 
he did finish it, with imperishable renown to himself, 
and honor to his country. It is not the idle language 
of eulogy or vain-glory, to say, that the names of 
Hume and Robertson have not reflected more lustre 
upon the historical literature of England, than will 
those of Bancroft and Prescott upon that of America ! 

When we consider, gentlemen, the career of this 
country, the instructive lessons which its annals un- 
fold, the light which it sheds upon the philosophy of 
human nature, and the aid which it imparts to the 
concerns of social life, we may well hope for histo- 
rians worthy of the subject, and of her own fame. 
May we not hope that, out of this institution, aloof 
from "the storm's career," and above its power, shall 
spring writers who will vindicate the faith of history 
and the majesty of truth, by writing at least a veri- 
table account of Pennsylvania? Her fortunes and 
repute are involved in the question of her historian. 
The moral grandeur of tlie colonial plan has not 
been developed by Proud, by Gordon, or even by 
Professor Ebeling of Hamburg, whose noble chro- 
nicle is suffered to remain in the German language, 
except the translated fragment of it, by the late Mr. 
Dn Ponceau The comparative antiquity of your 



THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 45 

College, and the elegant aims of }'our Society, may 
justify the hope that this want may be supplied from 
the alumni of the one, or the fellows of the other. 
In the history of this State, a new field of philosophy 
is to be broken and explored, a new department for 
the moralist is to be evolved and elucidated. Greece 
and Rome exhibit, in their early stages, only the re- 
sults of successful valor; and modern Europe, from 
the earliest dawn of her morning to a period almost 
coeval with the settlement of this country, discloses 
throughout her confines, with certain partial excep- 
tions, a spectacle of barbarism which appealed to no 
higher principle than the instinct of brute force for 
all its achievements. In these Academic shades, in 
the heart of Pennsylvania herself, it will be a grateful 
employment, to trace the fruits of her maturity to the 
seeds of her spring-time; to show by what means 
she so largely contributed to the recognition of those 
grand ideas which were ascendant at the Revolution, 
and uppermost at the birth of the Republic and the 
Constitution. The historian may be told that his task 
cannot be popular; that no stirring incident, no mighty 
event, no tragical catastrophe, has disturbed the smooth 
current of our domestic annals. But let him not be 
deterred; though the people were happy and peace- 
ful, their history contains the elements of a diffusive 
and permanent interest, beyond those of a passing or 
fugitive splendor. 

It is an error of almost universal acceptance, which 
declares that the happiest people present the poorest 



46 HISTORY A BRANCH OF 

annals. Wordsworth has poetically expre.ssed the 
practice of annalists and historians, when he says, 

"Times of quiet ami unbroken peace, 

Though for a nation times of blessedness, 
Give back faint echoes from the historian's page." 

It is not surprising that such a sentiment should be 
received as an axiom, when we consider the import- 
ance which is assigned in general histories to the 
march of armies, and the devastations of conquest. 
But is it the necessary consequence of the happmess of 
a State, that her annals should be devoid of entertain- 
ment and instruction? While a subordinate place is 
given to the arts oi peace, and greater prominence to 
those of war, the causes of domestic felicity and so- 
cial advancement must rank, in grandeur, below those 
prolific sources of individual ruin and national decay, 
which are to be found amid the mischiefs of ambition, 
the turbulence of anarchy, or the oppressions of mis- 
rule. But the attractiveness of the historian's page 
will be increased, in proportion as moral causes rise in 
value over the estimate of physical force. In exact 
proportion as the jj/iilosophi/ of history is studied, the 
story of a tranf[uil age, and of a virtuous people, will 
augment in interest and importance. Mankind are 
too well acquainted with the causes of ruin and mi- 
sery, that they should not now be taught the more 
attractive lesson of the means of being happy. 

I might point, in illustration of these sentiments, to 
the beautiful career of Maryland, in the age of Lord 
Baltimore. Though a Catholic, he opened wide the 



THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 47 

doors of his colony to every Christian sect ; though a 
member of the English aristocracy, he was the firm 
and undeviating friend of popular rights ; though opu- 
lent and powerful, he was quick in the perception, 
and just in the reward of modest merit; charitable to 
the Indian, and lenient in his punishment of the trans- 
gressor. His colony furnishes abundant evidence of 
his ardent and inextinguishable attachment to the 
great cause of civil and religious liberty. From the 
settlement of the province to the year 1654, Mary- 
land shone as " a bright, particular star" of colonial 
history, exhibiting a picture of religious freedom and 
social happiness almost without a parallel in the an- 
nals of Christian and political philanthropy. 

The history of Rhode Island presents, in the pecu- 
liarity of the settlement, in the liberal sentiments of its 
founders, in the mild government which was estab- 
lished, in the social peace which reigned, one of the 
most instructive pages of human annals. It was the 
singular spectacle of men seeking safety from the reli- 
gious zeal of their co-religionists, of men ejected from 
a common asylum, by their stricken partners in exile, 
their fellow-victims in persecution. Williams and 
Coddington, in laying the foundations of their import- 
ant little colony, securely placed the corner-stone of 
religious freedom over the world. In the principles 
they diffused and exemplified, they preceded the writ- 
ings of Locke and Bayle. It is for the pen of impar- 
tial history, in tracing to their source the elements of 
religious liberty, to do justice to these early benefactors 
of their race, and to count each successive champion 



48 Hlt^roRV A KRANLH OF 

that appeared as a new wreath added to the crowning 
chaplet of their glory. 

Another example may be cited, which will more 
fully elucidate the doctrine I would enforce. It is that 
of provincial Pennsylvania. Her story is destitute of 
the tclat of military fame ; — she repo.ses her claims to 
the attention of philosophers, not upon her military, 
but her moral triumphs. Her Founder was able to 
show to the world, how peace and tranquillity, tolera- 
tion and clemency, may be made subservient to the 
permanent welfare of mankind. He illustrated the 
practical effects of this grand system, in the continued 
happiness and undisturbed prosperity of his colony. 
The treaty of peace and friendship which he concluded 
with the Indians, beneath the wide-spread branches of 
the great Elm tree, is the only treaty, says Voltaire, 
in the history of human affairs, which was never 
sworn to, and never broken. He and his companions 
enter, without arm.s, or warlike weapons of any kind, 
into the midst of a savage band of intrepid and cele- 
brated warriors; — the hand of friendship is tendered 
and accepted, and perpetual good-will is mutually 
plighted. For a period of near Jiftij years which fol- 
lowed this imposing event, no heart-burning, estrange- 
ment, injustice, or complaint, was heard from either 
of the contracting parties. They lived upon terms of 
the closest neighborhood, and the most unreserved in- 
timacy. From the settlement of the colony iu 1G82, 
to 1721, which was three years after the death of Penn, 
not a drop of Indian or white blood stained the virgin 
soil of ]-*ennsvlvania 



THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 49 

was committed by the white inhabitants, in violation 
of the treaty. Penti's principles of toleration were so 
broad as to permit the access of all sects of religion to 
equality of right, and immunity from burden, except 
such as was common to every colonist. At a time 
when the Statute Book of England was sanguinary in 
the extreme, the clemency of his penal laws abolished 
death in all cases hut murder; and the substituted 
penalties, though lenient in character, were most effi- 
cient in the prevention of crime. Here, then, is a 
nation presenting, for half a century, a happy and 
peaceful community, whose happiness and peace were 
owing to the principles of its government. But who 
will say, when he reflects upon the fruits of those 
great and everlasting principles, which formed the 
groundwork of the colonial edifice, the animating 
spirit of the social union, that such annals are jjoor? 
They are rich in that moral incident, which lies at the 
foundation of true philosophy, and which, faithfully 
exhibited on the historian's page, will convey those 
impressive lessons to mankind, whose acceptation will 
one day be as universal as their truth is indestructi- 
ble and eternal! 

These form only a few of the sublime ideas which 
the American historian will have to engrave upon the 
heart of society. It is his duty to extract from the 
example of the illustrious dead of past times, and the 
experience of other nations, those pregnant hints with 
which the page of all history is replete, and to trans- 
mit with these, the spirit and genius of his own, to 
future generations of mankind. The country will be 
7 



50 HISTORY A BRANCH OF THE NATIONAL LITERATURE. 

honored for this spirit of practical philosophy in its 
historical authors. A deeper and stronger amor patrice. 
at home, a wider and more permanent repute abroad, 
will be some of the rich fruits of such a literature. 
The treasured wisdom of Egypt, of Greece, of Rome, 
of modern Europe, — not their theoretical maxims, but 
the proofs and lessons of their history, — may be appro- 
priated by our people, and made their own. The in- 
structive annals of England, divested of that glare 
which dazzles the eye, of that pageantry which be- 
wilders the understanding of her writers, would thus 
be traced by the steady hand and vigorous originality 
of an American pen. Free from hereditary bias, and 
exempt from the prejudice of party, it may faithfully 
draw the distinctive merits of her leading authors and 
statesmen. It would thus, without a feeling to guide 
it, but filial solicitude and a reverence for truth, disen- 
gage the philosophy of her history from the mass of 
empty nothings with which it is overlaid and op- 
pressed. As the destinies of freedom over the world 
are interwoven with the fate of this Republic, and as 
the best political light is that reflected from the past, 
our writers, in erecting such a system of history, would 
build the monument of their own fame. 



APPENDIX 



Note 1. (Vide p. 38.) Samuel Gurney, a cool and sagacious 
banker, of London, thus gloomily writes to his friend, Joseph Sturge, 
under date August 23, 1849, as to the ruinous agency of war in 
Europe, and the probable issue of the national debt of England. 

" In round numbers, I presume that not far short of two millions of 
the inhabitants of Europe, in the prime and strength of their lives, 
have been abstracted from useful and productive labor, and are made 
consumers, only, of the good gifts of the Almighty, and of national 
wealth. The cost of the maintenance of these armies and navies can- 
not be very much less than two hundred millions of pounds sterling 
per annum, taking into consideration the subject in all its collateral 
bearings; at least, it must amount to an enormous sum. Does not 
this view of the suljject, in a large degree, expose the cause of such 
masses of poverty, distress, and sin, which at present pervade many of 
the districts of Europe ? Is not such the legitimate result of so vast a 
waste of labor, food, and wealth? Moreover, I venture to give it as my 
decided judgment — a judgment formed upon some knowledge of mone- 
tary matters, that, unless the nations of Europe adopt an opposite system 
in this respect, many of them will inevitably become bankrupt, and will 
have to bear the disgrace and evils of such a catastrophe." * * * " In 
respect of my ovra country, I more boldly assert that it is my judgment 
that, unless she wholly alters her course in these respects, bankruptcy 
will ultimately be the result. We have spent from fifteen to twenty 
millions sterling per annum for warlike purposes since the peace of 1815. 
Had that money been applied to the discharge of the National debt, by 
this time it would have been nearly annihilated : but, if our military 



52 APPENDIX. 

expenditure be persisted in, and no reduction of our national debt take 
place at a period of our history certainly cbaracterized by very fair 
prosperity and general political calm, how is it to be expected that the 
amount of our revenue will bo attained in a time of adversity, which we 
must from time to time anticipate, in our future history? Should 
such adversity come upon us, I venture to predict that our revenue 
will not be maintained, nor the dividends paid, unless more efficient 
steps be taken to prevent such a catastrophe in these days of prosperity 
and peace." 

The London Times, in the course of a long article on the letter, 
lets drop these significant remarks : — 

" Mr. S. Gurney has had to do with indebted men and estates. He 
knows the history of many incumbrances. He has seen the vast mort- 
gage lying like an incubus on the resources of nature and the energy 
of man. He has traced the slow but sure drain of a fixed interest 
paid out of a fluctuating and perhaps a falling revenue. He has 
watched the debtor struggling for many year.s, and just keeping afloat, 
till there comes some extraordinary aggravation of his burdens, and 
then down he goes. * * * Unless the nation pays ofi' its debt while it 
can, the day will come when it cannot, and when it will find even the 
interest of that debt too much for its revenue. Within three years we 
have added twelve millions to our debt, and have Ijarely attained, if 
we have attained, an equilibrium between our incomings ami our out- 
goings. At the present moment, therefore, we are at a stand-still, 
with a debt, the interest of which is about thirty million pounds per 
annum. But is it reasonable, is it possible to suppose that we can 
maintain this equilibrium ? Any one of many very probable casualties 
may compel a sudden increase of expenditui'e, and hurl the state an- 
other step in the downward course to bankruptcy." 

Note 2. (Vide p. 39.) The Eev. Sidney Smith, unwise a finan- 
cier as he proved himself by the sale of his Pennsylvania bonds, under 
par, has ingeniously grouped together, in his characteristic way, some 
of the subjects of taxation in England. It is a curious but sad picture 
to contemplate. 

"We can inform Jonathan," savs he, ''what are the inpvitalile cnn- 



APPENDIX. 53 

sequences of being too fond of glory : Taxes upon every article which 
enters into the mouth, or covers the back, or is placed under the foot — 
taxes upon everything which it is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell, or 
taste — taxes upon warmth, light, and locomotion — taxes on everything 
on earth, and the waters under the earth — on everything that comes 
from abroad, or is grown at home — taxes on the raw material — taxes 
on every fresh value that is added to it by the industry of man — taxes 
on the sauce which pampers man's appetite, and the drug that restores 
him to health — on the ermine which decorates the judge, and the rope 
which hangs the criminal — on the poor man's salt, and the rich man's 
spice — on the brass nails of the coffin, and the ribands of the bride — 
at bed or board, couehant or levant, we must pay. The schoolboy 
whips his taxed top — the beardless youth manages his taxed horse, 
with a taxed bridle, on a taxed road; — and the dying Englishman, 
pouring his medicine, which has paid seven per cent., into a spoon that 
has paid fifteen per cent., flings himself back upon his chintz bed, 
which has paid twenty-two per cent., — and expires in the arms of an 
apothecary who has paid a license of a hundred pounds for the privi- 
lege of putting him to death. His whole property is then imme- 
diately taxed from two to ten per cent. Besides the proliate, large 
fees are demanded for burying him in the chancel ; his virtues are 
handed down to posterity on taxed marble; and he is then gathered 
to his father.s — to be taxed no more." — Sidnei/ Smith's Woilx-s, vol. i. 
pp. 323-4. 



11 April, 1 853. ^ 



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